NORTHWEST INDIA IS THE COUNTRY’S HEAT EPICENTRE, WITH PUNJAB AND HARYANA IN THE ZONE OF FASTEST-RISING HEAT: 52-YEAR STUDY

• A 52-YEAR ANALYSIS OF INDIA’S WEATHER (1971–2022) FINDS NORTHWEST INDIA, THE REGION THAT INCLUDES HAS THE STRONGEST TRENDS IN THE COUNTRY FOR DAYTIME HEAT, HUMID HEAT AND HEATWAVE SEVERITY. PUNJAB AND HARYANA,• THE AREA UNDER EXTREME DAYTIME HEAT IN THE NORTHWEST REACHED 15% TO 20% OR MORE IN SEVERAL YEARS AFTER 2000, UP FROM A MUCH LOWER BASE IN EARLIER DECADES.• THE STUDY CALLS FOR HEAT ACTION TO BE THE PRIORITY RESPONSE FOR THE NORTHWEST.

Face2News/Chandigarh

A new national study tracking India’s weather from 1971 to 2022 names Northwest India as the country’s heat epicentre, the region where extreme heat is rising fastest and reaching the largest share of land. Punjab and Haryana sit within this region, alongside Rajasthan, Delhi and western Uttar Pradesh.,

The study, titled ‘Evolution of Climate Extremes Over the Indian Subcontinent Using a Revised CEI’ and published in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Climatology by scientists at the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), combined seven separate hazards, among them daytime heat, humid heat, heatwave severity and drought, into a single India Climate Extremes Index built on 52 years of IMD observations, with trends tested using the Mann-Kendall method.

Across the northwest, the study finds the strongest trends in the country for daytime temperature, humid heat and heatwave severity, the last rising faster here than in any other region. The area experiencing extreme daytime heat climbed to 15% to 20% or more of the region in several years after 2000. The authors link the persistence of this heat to arid conditions, drying soils and intense land heating, and note that heavy irrigation across the Indo-Gangetic plain, including Punjab, can sharpen heat stress when irrigation water runs short.

“The northwest is the country’s heat epicentre. Daytime heat, humid heat and heatwave severity are all rising faster here than anywhere else in India, and states such as Punjab and Haryana sit squarely within that zone.”— M. Rajeevan, co-author, Atria University, Bengaluru “Heatwave severity is climbing faster over the northwest than in any other region we studied. Intense irrigation across the plain can also sharpen heat stress in years when water is short.”— Thota Mohan, lead author, National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting
What the study recommends

The study names managing heat stress and urban heat as the priority for the northwest. It frames adaptation as cross-sectoral, spanning agriculture, water management, health and infrastructure, and calls for finer-scale, high-resolution monitoring so that localised heat extremes are not lost in region-wide averages. The authors propose the index as an operational tool that agencies can run each year to track where stress is building.